The White Rock RCMP quarterly report for October through December was presented to council on Jan. 27 – and it held few surprises.
Staff Sgt. Rob Dixon's remarks to councillors suggested that while figures on some areas of policing and categories of crime generally are down from 2023, data is insufficient to draw any particular conclusions.
For example, total calls for service, by year's end of 2024 were down by some 800 calls over 2023 (6832 to 7649), but that fluctuation falls within the range of what has been seen over past years, he noted.
"I'm not overly concerned by it, or think there's any one factor to that," he said.
The distribution of criminal offences in the last quarter showed that property crime made up 41 per cent, disturbance or breach of the peace offences amounted to 32 per cent, personal offences were 22 per cent; five per cent were 'criminal driving' – that is such things as prohibited drivers operating vehicles, or impairment resulting in immediate roadside prohibitions – while drug offences accounted for less than one per cent of the total for the quarter.
A total of 21 impaired drivers were removed from the roads in the last quarter, contributing to a 2024 total of 67, he said. A total of 409 tickets or warnings were issued in 2024, distributed evenly throughout the city, he noted.
Dixon went on to say that in the last quarter of 2024, White Rock RCMP forwarded 15 cases to the Crown, down significantly from 34 cases in the third quarter, 24 in the second quarter and 22 in the first quarter.
"Part of that decline, I know for a fact, is that we had quite a few files that take a little bit more investigation," he said.
There have also been some of the changes in the court system, he added, that require officers to "pretty much have a complete case before we can forward it for charge approval."
"A lot of the delays come when we have to wait for things like transcriptions, lab results; things of that nature."
Thefts from vehicles, he said were "more or less in line" with what was seen in 2023, although there were 30 in the fourth quarter of 2024 as opposed to 19 in the latter quarter of 2023.
"In the coming year, what we may see is an increase in this and some other offences – the reason being that we've been short on the municipal side of things; in our records department, and we've gotten behind on the Q. and A. and the 'scoring.'
"We have people who look through the files and determine for Stats Canada that they need to be scored for certain offences. We have record people go though that file and determine whether or not it might check some other boxes in so far as what crime types might be there. With theft from vehicles it may be recorded as something else perhaps, like mischief or something, but when that file's in records they realize that this is also a theft from a vehicle – that, right now, just isn't getting picked up quite as much."
In stolen vehicles, numbers were also in line with what has been seen, but there was a little decline throughout the year (30 in total, as opposed to 42 in 2023).
Residential break and enters also were down from 37 in 2023 to 27 in 2024.
Dixon said, however, that "the numbers aren't big enough that we could look at it and see any pattern."
Commercial break and enters (31 in 2024 to 61 in 2023) are another area where "we may see an increase over the year," Dixon said, due to increased 'scoring' by records staff – a theft from a storage locker in a strata building, for example, could also be scored as a commercial break and enter.
In crimes against persons (harassment, extortion, harassing communications, uttering threats and assaults of all kinds) the numbers (315 in 2024, 344 in 2023) "pretty much line up with what we would expect to see based on previous years," he added.
There was a significant decline in Mental Health Act assessments and apprehensions (56 in 2024 from 111 in 2023) he noted.
"We attended 98 calls in this past quarter that had some mental health component to them – 29 were straight mental health calls; those are calls where someone is concerned about someone's mental health or right off the bat there's a mental health component; of those calls, 23 of them resulted in us making an apprehension and taking that person to hospital for assessment."
A total of 2,196 hours were logged by 30 community policing volunteers in White Rock in 2024, while trained victim services volunteers (two are currently available) averaged some 70 clients per month.
"The (community policing) volunteers do amazing work – we wouldn't be able to run the detachment without them," he said.
Three other community programs debuted in 2024: citizen patrols of commercial areas (volunteers pro-actively engage with community members, without engaging in actual enforcement); volunteer home checks for registered residents who may be away from their residences on vacation or for some other reason, and a meal delivery program, in partnership with the Cloverdale Community Kitchen, for seniors, those recovering from injury or illness, or those who have chronic or acute medical conditions.
In answer to a question from Coun. Christopher Trevelyan, Dixon said the detachment is actively encouraging people to get involved in block watch programs, and is seeking to extend the concept to businesses as well.
